


gather your skeletons far inside

by heroisms (tiny_white_hats)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Femslash Exchange, Language Barrier, Past Jane Foster/Thor, Post-Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, bisexual Jane Foster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 11:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12298725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiny_white_hats/pseuds/heroisms
Summary: Jane and Gamora, learning to speak and learning what to say.





	gather your skeletons far inside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



> Gamora/Jane canon-divergent post-GotG 2 + people slowly and cautiously learning to be emotionally vulnerable & the very beginnings of bonding over infinity gem posession  
> for snickfic. I hope it's all you wanted from this pairing! I love them and love writing them, and now that I've started I plan to keep going.
> 
> Title from Slipped, by The National, who I love.

Maria Hill is getting frustrated, so profoundly even Jane can see it on her face, and Jane is no great talent at reading people. “Jane,” Hill groans, “see this my way, for a minute.”

“Doctor Foster,” Jane interrupts. Maria hadn’t been slouching, not precisely, but at the interruption, her spine straightens. “Don’t rely on familiarity when asking me to do something I have no interest in doing. I’m a astrophysicist, Agent Hill, not a diplomat. Certainly not a babysitter.”

“Doctor Foster,” Maria tries again. “Don’t you want to go to space?”

Jane stares, still.

“Think of this,” Maria says, “as your ticket off world.” She paused for a moment, while Jane tried not to fidget. It felt like gloating, as if she knew she had Jane now. She probably knew full well that, now that she’d played her trump card, her trip to space card, that Jane would do anything she asked. “So, do we have a deal, Doctor?”

“Can you clarify what that deal would look like?” Jane asks. She’s playing it cool, being casual. Nobody wants to make deals with children, she can hear Tony lecturing, you’ve got to make them think you’re granting them a favor.

“You liaise with our extraterrestrials, and then we send you on a diplomatic visit to their part of space. ”

"Where?"

"Far from here," Maria says. "Far from Asgard, too. Outside of my frame of reference."

Jane meets Maria’s eyes. She looks weirdly close to being desperate, as if she needs this from Jane. Jane has never known Maria Hill to need anything. What was it about these extraterrestrials, about this job, that Jane was the only person Hill could take it to? A hook as big as going off-planet, there was bound to be a catch just as big. There was absolutely no logical reason for Jane to take this deal and do this for Maria.

Jane says, “it’s a deal.”

 

* * *

 

Peter Quill, born March 14, 1980, in Grain Valley, Missouri, had come home to visit a grave, and he had brought four aliens with him. Quill, who was only half human, as it turned out, was technically still an American citizen, even if he had been presumed dead since 1988, and legally could not be stopped from visiting his mother’s grave. In light of this, Maria Hill had chosen to view this as a diplomatic mission, rather than an alien invasion. Simpler protocol for diplomats, less mess, less paperwork, less carnage.

Jane understands all of that, the part she doesn’t follow is Hill’s decision to assign a civilian academic in place of a SHIELD liaison, or any of the thousands of people employed by the United States government with any sort of diplomatic experience. Jane might be a genius, and she might be the scientist most equipped to use whatever information Quill and his companions could provide to form a better understanding of their expanding universe, but Jane was so unqualified for the actual work of diplomacy and basic hospitality that it practically rendered her PhD void. She’d sat through the briefing and she’d read the file on their extraterrestrials, but even with all the preparation in the world, as soon as Jane enters the room where a agitated looking Shield agent is waiting with her new charges, she gasps out, “oh my god, that raccoon has a gun.”

The one humanoid of the three who’s not bright green starts cackling, the raccoon shouts in a language definitely not spoken on earth and points the gun at her the minute she says raccoon, and what looks like a miniature Ent sitting in the back of the room says “groot?” The two humanoids who aren’t doubled over, laughing, turn toward the heavily armed raccoon, who is still taking aim at her, and also start yelling, and Jane finally understands why Maria handed this assignment to a astrophysicist instead of a diplomat.There is no diplomacy to undertake here, just crisis management and hopefully field notes, if she can slip a few questions about planetary physics in between the shouting and the threats of violence.

Jane turns to the Shield agent, who looks even more anxious, and demands, “what are they saying? What language is that? This was not in my briefing. Was it?”

The non-green one, Quill, she assumes, stops laughing and stares at her. “What in the--” He scoffs, looking panicked. “You don’t, you don’t speak Prime?”

Jane’s fingers twitch, reaching for a field notebook she wasn’t allowed to bring. “What’s Prime?” she asks, slowly.

“What’s Prime?” he repeats, gaping. “Holy God. I’m not a translator. Do you get that?” he turns to the Shield agent, looking desperate. “Tell your boss I am not a translator.”

The agent gulps. “Boss says you’re our translator.”

Quill breaks down in a string of what can only be expletives in Prime, before turning to his companions, and offering a quick burst of words. At which point, they all start laughing.

“Can’t we get Ramsey in here?” Jane asks, desperately. She is good at languages, but she can’t learn an alien dialect in a week. And Quill certainly does not seem cut out as translator.

“No. He’s off payroll.”

“I did not come back to earth to be the responsible party!” Quill insists. “I’ve got personal business, here!

He wasn't just born on Earth, Jane remembers, he lived here until he was eight. Which is why he’s the only one with a word of English. If he was raised on earth, but had the capacity to learn Prime, there’s no reason Jane can’t too, she decides.

“How about this,” Jane interrupts the hysteria. “You translate until I learn Prime, and as soon as I catch up, which shouldn’t be too long, we don’t need a translator.”

“How long?”

Jane gives her most reassuring smile. “I’m very smart.”

Quill does not look reassured. The green woman pushes him out of the way and approaches Jane. She is incredibly beautiful and has two swords strapped to her back, and Jane has not been this nervous and overwhelmed and stunned at the sight of someone since she first met Thor. She chooses not to linger on the comparison.

The woman holds a closed fist to her chest and inclines her head. “Gamora,” she says.

This much, Jane understands. She mirrors the gesture and says, “Dr. Jane Foster.”

She thinks they have a deal.

 

* * *

 

Prime, Jane learns, is the common language in Shi’ar space, as made common by Xandar’s Nova Corps. For all of earth’s innovation and progress, they are so far behind their neighboring planetary systems, they only discovered they had neighbors when the neighbors came to visit. So, naturally, every thing Jane learns from Quill is extremely classified, so classified she knows even the very fact of her knowing is giving Maria Hill hives.

Peter is an incredibly bad teacher, but Jane has taught herself more difficult languages than Prime, so as soon as he covers pronouns and verb conjugation, Jane hardly needs him. She goes to Gamora, instead.

Jane finds Gamora where she’s accustomed to finding her, lurking somewhere in their spacecraft and keeping to herself. The five of them and Jane had been restricted to roam the SHIELD base, and the lack of an escape effort seems almost like a diplomatic courtesy. Had their extraterrestrials wanted to explore, all the resources on this base would be hard pressed to stop them. Peter Quill aside, the rest of the team seems to have little interest in earth culture. Rocket, in particular, seems especially hostile.

Gamora is throwing knives, producing thin silver blades, that are more the suggestion of knives than weapons Jane can recognize, from a belt and tossing then with unerring accuracy into a holograph of a man’s purple face. Jane watch for a moment, and wonders. For a pacifist, for a girl who grew up fragile and uncoordinated and athletically disinterested, Jane has found herself an adult with no small attraction to warriors. Gamora throws another knife, deft and quick and certain she’ll find her mark, and Jane thinks about those sure, clever fingers finding their mark between her thighs. Jane's not been with anyone since Thor, and it was at least a year before Thor that she was last with another woman, and every so often, she is overwhelmed by the idea of intimacy. Gamora takes aim again, and Jane coughs, trying to kill her blush through sheer will power.

Gamora lets her knife fly, before she acknowledges Jane. She turns, she watches, she waits.

In stumbling Prime, Jane asks, “Please, teach me?”

Gamora lifts one of her knives and asks a question Jane can’t yet understand.

“No,” Jane says. “Teach me to speak.”

Another long pause, and then Gamora says what Jane now knows means "yes."

 

* * *

  
Jane had wanted Gamora to teach her Prime, now that Peter had given her enough to communicate with, because she is curious about Gamora. Gamora has the serious eyes Jane learned to recognize in her brief stint socializing with superheroes, and she wants to know her story. Jane just wants to know anything she can about the universe at large, and she wants Gamora to be her teacher. It has been a long time since she’s felt this kind of immediate attraction. All that Jane knows about Gamora is her name and the precision of her aim and the way that she smiles at her teammates jokes as if she might laugh. But even that, limited as it is, leaves Jane wanting. It is senseless, the way she wants Gamora, a desire based fully on physicality and an instinctive respect. But Jane has wanted a lot of things in her life, none of those things as fiercely as she has ever wanted to learn, and any other desires she might have now still come second to this.

In their first lesson, Gamora tells her, “I am not a teacher.” She shrugs a shoulder, stiffly; it’s an unnatural movement from her, a learned behavior. She may not know how to teach, but Jane doesn’t need an instructor, just somebody who knows how to adapt. As long as Gamora can be patient with her, Jane can figure it out.

“You don’t need to teach me,” Jane says. “Just talk. I’ll learn.”

Gamora is right. She has absolutely no instinct for teaching language, and of all their extraterrestrials, Gamora was possibly the worst choice to practice language acquisition from, after the tree. She is reticent, and while Peter and Drax and the raccoon talk constantly when Jane is with them, Gamora waits to have something to say. She is not inclined to talk for the sake of talking, but it’s what Jane has asked of her, so they sit in front of Gamora’s holographic target in the cargo hold, and Gamora describes the cities of Xandar, explains the political structure of the Shi’ar Imperium, tells her a tall tale she’d once heard of an Earth woman who flew to Kree space.

Learning this way is slow, and Jane understands only slightly more of what Gamora says than she doesn’t understand. On their third day of talking, Gamora rattles off a long string of words, the only one of which Jane recognizes is learn. She is gazing at Jane is a curious way, eyes warm but mouth tight, and Jane doesn’t understand why, but she suspects whatever Gamora just said, she wasn’t ready for Jane to understand, quite yet.

Jane hesitates, finds the words to ask Gamora to rephrase, but before she does, Gamora continues. “You are brave, to learn this way, Dr. Foster,” she says, and Jane understands.

“Thank you,” Jane says, and she doesn’t look away from Gamora’s eyes when she says, “Teaching me is a kindness.”

 

* * *

 

Gamora, last of the Zen-Whoberi, is a warrior born, which is to say she is the opposite of Dr. Jane Foster in nearly every way, but for the determination they each give to all that they do and the mutual respect they share.

“You do not wish to know how to fight?” Gamora asks, incredulous. She is sharpening a sword and Jane is watching her. Jane likes to watch, likes to surround herself with people who are good at the things they do. In a way, watching Gamora with her weapons is like the month she spent at Stark Industries, in the lab with Tony and Bruce and all taking turns being the smartest person in the room. The more dangerous comparison is to Thor, to how she would watch him treat his weapons with the same care he would show in bed, the attention and the fondness for the things that matter. Gamora is beautiful with her sword in hand, not because she is dangerous, but because she is dedicated, because Jane is attracted to competency and expertise and genius. The way Gamora moves with a blade in her hand, not as if the sword were an extension of her but as if every movement was one she had invented, is its own kind of genius, even if more steeped in physicality than Jane’s own.

“Not really,” Jane says. “I’ve never really needed to.”

Gamora looks at her curiously. “Your people are incredibly violent. Should you not defend yourself?”

“I’ve always had someone to keep me safe,” Jane says. It’s a weak answer, and not the truest one. She had never felt the need to learn self-defense when Thor had been in her life, true, and no effort of her own could have kept her safer than a god. But the only thing Thor hadn’t protected her from, no amount of fighting ever would have stopped. Jane still remembers how it feels to be possessed, the dirty unease of carrying something in your mind and the ooze of paranoia that never really leaves afterwards. There is no violence more dangerous than that in the mind. Jane doesn’t have the language to explain this to Gamora just yet, but even if she did, the aether is still not something she is ever comfortable speaking about.

“And when you’re alone?” Gamora demands.

“On earth, no one’s ever really alone, any more.” Jane says. “My work is science, Gamora. I can’t solve my problems by hitting things.”

Gamora’s eyes are hard, but her hands don’t stop moving once. “Everyone must defend themselves some day, Dr. Foster. And there is no sympathy for those who can’t.”

“I don’t fight,” Jane insists. She doesn’t know the word for pacifist, and she’s starting to worry that their might not be a translation in Prime. Earth is no bastion of peace and stability, but the way Gamora talks about the rest of the universe and the artillery the Guardians had arrived with both seem to indicate an inherent violence that society is organized around. “I’m peaceful.”

Gamora puts her sword down. “Very noble of you,” she sneers. For the first time, she realizes Gamora can be cruel. “In my experience, pacifists are the first to get brutalized. No matter how noble.” She is gone before Jane can even think to respond.

 

* * *

 

That night, Jane dreams about Gamora. She is kneeling, Gamora laid out between her thighs, sprawled in the fold-out camper bed Jane slept in for months in her RV. She knows Gamora doesn’t belong here, but Gamora puts a hand on Jane’s thigh, and she stops worrying about where anybody ought to be.

“If you can’t protect yourself,” Gamora says, speaking English like she had been born to it, “you’re going to lose control again.”

Jane pins Gamora’s hands above her head and kisses her, biting her lip and pressing down against her. “I’m in control.”

Held still under Jane’s hips and hands and thighs, Gamora says, “you haven’t been in control in years,” and the world floods red and black and Jane is choking on the aether and gasping.

She wakes up, screaming.

 

* * *

 

There is a Prime word for pacifist, Quill tells her, derived from Whoberi, and considered incredibly dated. Jane asks why a word like pacifist would ever become antiquated, and Quill winces.

“It’s probably because all the Zen-Whoberi were massacred, basically,” Quill says. He winces, shifts in his seat, and looks over Jane’s shoulder as he tells her. It takes very little from him for Jane to suddenly understand a great deal.

She finds Gamora.

“The things that I fear,” Jane says, as Gamora slices at a punching bag with tiny daggers in each hand, “can’t be fought. Not physically, I mean. I know there are dangerous things that can be stabbed or punched or shot, but those are not my fights.”

Gamora watches Jane quietly for a long time. After minutes of silence, of Jane anxiously anticipating what Gamora might say, of phrasing and rephrasing what she might say in response, Gamora sheathes her weapons. “I would not see you dead before your time, Dr. Foster. Jane.”

Jane laughs. “No, I don’t want that, either. But a gun isn’t what will keep me safe.

“You must think I’m so scared,” she says. “Poor little scientist, won’t learn to fight.”

Gamora begins to move, circling the bag to step nearer to Jane. “I am told you will be leaving with us, once Quill has paid his respects.”

“I’m like an ambassador, only I’m not supposed to talk to anybody,” Jane explains. “I’m supposed to collect data and report back, but we’re calling it a diplomatic mission.”

Gamora smiles. “No, I do not think you are scared. And even if you were scared, I would still know you to be brave.”

Jane has been thinking about Gamora endlessly since they met, about her clever eyes and capable hands and the suggestion of breasts behind her armor. Jane has never felt particularly brave in her life, not in the days before the aether, and certainly not since, but the very fact of Gamora calling her brave makes Jane feel fearless. So Jane decides to act like it.

Gamora has come so close that it only takes Jane two steps and their chests are flush. Gamora is a full head taller than Jane but it hardly matters; Jane straightens her back and takes Gamora’s face in her hands and kisses her, leaning upwards and inwards to make it last.

“I hope that was okay,” Jane says, smiling despite her nerves. God, she hopes it was okay, hopes she hadn’t misread Gamora’s closeness, prays that she hadn’t just offended some alien custom she didn’t know existed. “I thought,” she pauses, uncertain. “I wanted to be brave for you.”

Gamora takes a piece of Jane’s hair and rolls it between her fingers, like she’s curious. She tucks it behind Jane’s ear, and brushes the ridge of her ear, gentler than Jane has ever seen Gamora be. “The things you fear,” Gamora says. She brushes a thumb along Jane’s cheekbone, her eyebrow, her hairline. She’s curious, and Jane is willing to let her do all the exploring she likes. “They are things of the mind.”

“I guess, yeah.” Jane is breathless with this woman’s hands on her. She is giddy with having kissed Gamora, with the hope that Gamora might kiss her again, so much so that it’s difficult to focus on what Gamora is saying. Jane bites her lip and focuses, watches Gamora watching her, eyes darting to her bitten lip.

“And still, you do the thing that you fear.” Gamora says, and with her hands framing Jane’s face, kisses her again. “We each have much to learn from the other.”

This is the first part of healing, Jane thinks. Letting someone in, doing the thing that you fear. She is leaving earth in two days, but for the first time since Svartalfheim, since the aether, Jane doesn’t feel like she’s running away. This time, with Gamora’s hands in her hair and the whole universe ahead of her, Jane thinks she’s running towards something good.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still working on the sequel to this that sees Jane travelling with the Guardians, but, unfortunately, this was entirely set on Earth. (The sequel, which sees Jane explores the universe and Gamora keeps her alive to do so, is entirely in space, and at least one of the locations in it is a planet entirely landscaped with coral reef formations.) I did try to incorporate interesting alien planets and cultures and language into this fic as much as possible, in the spirit of the request, but I thought it better to end the fic where I did so that the focus could be on Gamora and Jane building an understanding and allowing for vulnerability with each other, rather than having a huge tonal shift near the end and changing locations entirely.
> 
> I really hope you enjoy the fic, snickfic, despite some departure from your prompts! 
> 
> Some notes:  
> 1\. I totally made up Prime. I don't know if there is a common language in the comics off the top of my head, though I think humans are mostly able to communicate with alien races through tech, rather than a universal language. The name Prime references Nova Prime, because I didn't want to use a sci-fi language name used in another franchise.  
> 2\. Ramsey, the translator Jane mentions, is Doug Ramsey, a mutant with the ability to translate anything. He will never be in the mcu, because he's an X-Man, but I can dream.  
> 3\. The Shi'ar are an alien race, and the Shi'ar Imperium is one of the three main alien empires in the Marvel universe, which expanded to absorb a great deal of other planets and alien races.   
> 4\. The Skrull & the Kree are the other 2 empires, and the anecdote of the Earth woman who went to Kree space is a reference to Captain Marvel, who apparently has been a superhero in the mcu since the 90's.


End file.
